The servants looked at the white-faced, distraught girl pityingly.  They remembered that she was to have been the dying man’s wife.  The whole thing had been so sudden, was so shocking and tragic.  No wonder that she looked like death herself; they could not guess at the self-reproach, the self-denunciation, nor could Lady Linden.

“No one,” said her ladyship, “is to blame but me.  It was my doing, my own pig-headed folly.  The boy told me that the horse was a brute, and I—­I said that he—­if he hadn’t the pluck to try and break him in—­I would find someone who would.  I am his murderess!” her ladyship cried tragically.  “Yes, Marjorie, look at me—­look at the murderess of the man you love!”

“Aunt!”

“It is true.  Revile me!  I alone am guilty.  I’ve robbed you of your lover.”  Lady Linden was nearer to hysterics at this moment than ever in her life.

“How long? how long?” she demanded impatiently.  “How long will it be before that fool comes?”

The fool was the celebrated surgeon wired for to London.  He had wired back that he was on his way; no man could do more.

But the waiting, the horrible waiting; the ceaseless watching and listening for the sound of wheels, the strange hush that had fallen upon the house, the knowledge that there in an upper chamber death was waiting, waiting to take a young life.

Hours, every minute of which had seemed like hours themselves, hours had passed.  Lady Linden sat with her hands clenched and her eyes fixed on nothingness.  She blamed herself with all her honest hearty nature; she blamed herself even more unsparingly than in the past she had blamed others for their trifling faults.

Her self-recriminations had got on Marjorie’s nerves.  She could not bear to sit here and listen to her aunt when all the time she knew that it was she—­she alone who was to blame.  She had told him that she did not love him, that all his hopes must end, that the future they had planned between them should never be, and so had sent him to his death.

She waited outside in the big hall, her eyes on the stairs, her ears tensioned to every sound from above, and at every sound she started.

Voices at last, low and muffled, voices pitched in a low key, men talking as in deep confidence.  She heard and she watched.  She saw the two men, the doctor and the surgeon, descending the stairs; she rose and went to meet them, yet said never a word.

She watched their faces; she saw that they looked grave.  She saw that the face of the great man was worn and tired.  She looked in vain for something that would whisper the word “Hope” to her.

“Miss Linden is engaged to Mr. Arundel,” the local doctor said.

The great man held out his hand to her.  He knew so well, how many thousands of times had he seen, that same look of questioning, pitiful in its dumbness.

He held her hand closely, “There is hope.  That is all I care say to you—­just a hope, and that is all.”